The film "Bigwang" explores relationships more like family than family itself, though not bound by blood, and portrays the redemption of imperfect people. Some see echoes of Hirokazu Kore-eda, the Japanese master filmmaker, in the work. But the alternative family that director Lee Ji-won depicts has a different texture from Kore-eda's. If Kore-eda's family films are like watercolors or ink-wash paintings that quietly and calmly observe relationships, "Bigwang" is thick and rough-hewn. Making active use of retro colors, props and the texture of its spaces, the film layers on a deeply Korean sensibility and digs into the essence of family in a deeper, coarser way.
The film opens with the story of Jung-gu (Ryu Seung-ryong) and Nam-mi (Ha Ji-won), a star couple who once had everything. Jung-gu, a famous baseball player, and Nam-mi, a top actress, see their lives shaken by an incident involving Jung-gu's daughter Dong-ju (Kim Si-a), and they eventually break up. Having gone their separate ways, the two are brought face to face again eight years later when Dong-ju becomes caught up in another incident. Theirs is a relationship that left only wounds, but they take each other's hand to protect their daughter and chase the truth.
In this process, the film asks a question. What makes a family complete? Must it be bound by blood? "Bigwang" shows its answer not through grand words but through the characters' choices. It is not a relationship that fit together perfectly from the start, but a process in which people with different wounds and shortcomings become a family by choosing one another in moments of crisis.
Director Lee, who drew attention with "Miss Baek" for its portrayal of solidarity between a wounded woman and a child, expands the scope of redemption and solidarity through family in this work. Where two characters saved each other in her previous film, "Bigwang" weaves together a range of relationships — husband and wife, parent and child, relatives — into a single family. What stands out in particular is that the relationships among the female characters do not remain mere peripheral narrative. Nam-mi, Dong-ju and the other women do not stop at protecting one another; they throw themselves into the incident in their own ways and safeguard each other's lives.
What makes this sensibility all the more vivid is the film's mise-en-scène. "Bigwang" places not only hwatu and Go-Stop, a Korean card game, but also retro colors, props and spaces throughout. Rather than sleek, minimal imagery, it chooses familiar and somewhat exaggerated Korean scenery. Scenes of family members gathered in one space, exchanging words and naturally stepping into each other's lives, recall old Korean family dramas. As a result, the film's family comes across not as an object observed from a distance but as a familiar presence the audience has likely experienced at some point.
What brings this sensibility to life is the actors' performances. Ryu Seung-ryong and Ha Ji-won portray the complicated relationship between Jung-gu and Nam-mi, once dazzling but now broken down in their own ways. Resentment and awkwardness still linger between them, but the moment they must protect their daughter, they naturally end up on the same side. Bickering at times and displeased with each other at others, yet ultimately unable to turn away from one another, they create laughter and tenderness all at once.
Kim Hae-sook, who plays Jung-gu's mother and Nam-mi's mother-in-law, maximizes the mood of the film with a warm presence that embraces everyone as one family simply by appearing. Each time Kim Hae-sook appears, the aura of the veteran actress binding Jung-gu, Nam-mi and Dong-ju into a single family is nothing short of astonishing. The film's family grows all the richer with the addition of Kim Sun-young, who plays Ryu Seung-ryong's older sister.
The title "Bigwang" was inspired by scenes director Lee Ji-won imagined of the family gathered around playing Go-Stop. In hwatu, the bigwang card may look like an ambiguous piece, but it is essential to completing the "five gwang" set. It is a metaphor for how family is something that is incomplete on its own but finally fulfills its role only when together.
This message overlaps precisely with the film's characters. Jung-gu, Nam-mi, Dong-ju and the others are lacking and full of wounds in their own places, but they generate new strength when they come together. Rather than perfect people gathering to form a family, imperfect people fill each other's empty spaces to become one family. And so the family of "Bigwang" looks all the more perfect precisely because it is not perfect.
"Bigwang" had to endure a long wait to meet audiences even after it was finished. It is a work that made it to release only with difficulty, roughly five years after production. As a lineup of much-anticipated Korean films rolls into theaters this September, "Bigwang" meets audiences as the first to open the run. Given that it reaches theaters after such a long wait, the work carries a significance all its own.
Following the process of wounded, broken people lifting one another back up, one is reminded anew that the name "family" does not necessarily mean a perfect relationship. A family that is more perfect because it is not perfect. What "Bigwang" leaves behind is exactly that warm, weighty surge of emotion.
